The timing of a toothless and inaccurate OPCW report on an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria (from 4 April) and terrorists issuing false claims of a chemical attack in Ain Tarma in the Eastern Ghouta region are not coincidental. They are in fact inexorably related.

The OPCW has stated that sarin gas was used in a still incredible alleged attack said to have occurred on 4 April of this year in Syria’s Idlib Governorate. Syria and Russia have both challenged the credibility of the OPCW report as the investigators did not visit the site of the alleged attack nor did they obtain samples from the location of the alleged attack.

The conclusions of the OPCW’s findings were based on samples taken from Turkey, provided by known terrorists and terrorist agents who Syria says were bribed into complying with the Turkish authorities. Crucially, the report does not say who was responsible for any attack, claiming that it is not the OPCW’s responsibly to lay specific blame.

Syria had offered to fly investigators to the location of the alleged attack but this offer was refused. This comes after Russia concluded that the attack was staged based on a thorough Russian fact-finding investigation.

Russia also discovered that no one in the region of the alleged attack had come forward to any authority to ask for the necessary antidote to sarin gas exposure. Such a development is one of the most conclusive signs to date that the entire ‘attack’ story was a fabrication by al-Qaeda and their subsidiary White Helmets.

In refusing to examine the scene of the alleged attack, the OPCW has lost a great deal of public credibility. When the organisation took the opportunity to fully investigate the chemical weapons situation in Syria beginning in 2013, they acknowledged that the last vestiges of chemical weapons were removed from areas controlled by the Syrian government in 2014.

It is also important to remember that Syria has never used chemical weapons during internal struggles throughout its history. The weapons were only ever there as a deterrent against foreign aggression including from nuclear armed Israel.

The Syrian response to the OPCW report is reproduced below from the official Syrian Arab News Agency in Damascus:

“The Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said that the report issued by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) regarding the Khan Sheikhoun incident includes a fabricated narrative with no credibility at all and which cannot be accepted because it is removed from logic, demanding that the OPCW make reports that are fair, credible, and not subject to the pressure exerted by states and sides that seek to block access to the truth.

In a statement issued on Saturday, the Ministry said that the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW issued on 29/06/2017 a misleading report featuring the findings of a fact finding committee regarding the Khan Sheikhoun incident, and it seems that the main purpose of forming such committees is to hide facts, and that these committees’ reports are written and prepared in advance by certain circles that are hostile to Syria.

The Ministry said that the fact that the fact-finding committees relied on testimonies of terrorists located in Turkey shows the absence of the minimum amount of truth, as these witnesses brought to Turkey from Khan Sheikhoun are false witnesses that follow the instructors of those who paid them to testify.

The statement said that the same applies to the so-called “White Helmets” who are proven by documented facts to be tools for Jabhat al-Nusra and other terror organization and the American and British intelligence agencies, adding that the revealed sources cited by reports are ones controlled by Western intelligence and armed opposition groups that are controlled by the US, Britain, and other Western states, wondering how those who made the report can claim that the information they included has the bare minimum of what makes up an honest, reliable, and transparent investigation.

The Ministry said that the Syrian government has affirmed that it does not possess any chemical weapons immediately after the terrorists committed the crime in Khan Sheikhoun, and it condemned the use of toxic chemicals regardless of the location and circumstances and the side they are used against, as Syria believes that the use of such weapons is immortal and unjustifiable.

The statement noted that Syria expressed to cooperate fully with the Technical Secretariat so that the fact-finding committee can go to Khan Sheikhoun to investigate the incident on the ground, but the Secretariat said that it is unable to access the site because armed terrorist groups refused them access, which is further proof of the lack of professionalism by the fact-finding mission.

The Ministry added that Syria had informed the fact-finding mission when it visited Damascus that it will put a private plane at its disposal to visit al-Shuairat airport, but the OPCW also declined this invitation, pointing out that the representatives of Syria, Russia, and Iran had insisted during the OPCW Executive Council meeting on 29/06/2017 on sending a mission to al-Shuairat airport, but the US and its Western allies blocked this initiative to hide the truth about the attack on this airport from which Syrian warplanes take off to fight ISIS.

‘Now this report comes up with a fabricated and contrived narrative that has no credibility and cannot be accepted in any manner, because it is removed from logic and is concocted by a twisted imagination that only thinks about weaving conspiracies and about ways to raise the collapsing morale of terrorist groups following the achievements made by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies on the Syrian ground,’ the statement said.

The Ministry went on to say that the Syrian Arab Republic reiterates its rejection of such reports that are filled with misdirection and falsification of facts and of the over American threats that constitute attempts to invest in terrorism and the chemical weapons that are sent to terrorists by the states that sponsor them such as the UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and others.

The Ministry concluded by demanding that the OPCW make reports that are fair, credible, and not subject to the pressure exerted by states and sides that seek to block access to the truth and that harm the organization’s credibility, professionalism, and independence”.

Virtually simultaneous to the report from the OPCW being released, terrorists operating in Eastern Ghouta claimed that Syrian forces have deployed chlorine gas on their areas of occupation.

This is clearly an attempt to play into the hands of the United States who just under a week prior to the release of the OPCW report, claimed that Syria was preparing a chemical attack on Syrian territory, a claim as false as surreal.

The terrorists in Syria whose primary weapon at this time is false information rather than military arms, pounced on the double-edged sword of the statements from the United States and the misguided and misleading OPCW report.

If the United States now uses the statement from the terrorists in Eastern Ghouta to launch an attack on Syria, such a thing would represent both a crime and a blunder. This comes as the large US aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush docks in Israel. The Nimitz class carrier is capable of striking anywhere inside Syria.